rned his
attention to his land. The virgin sod had to be broken and the rich
black soil turned up in ridges to the air and sunlight. When the ground
was prepared the stock of seed-corn was planted or wheat sown, and the
farmer's old life began again under new and quite different
circumstances. In the eastern and oldest-settled part of the State these
beginnings date back a generation: in the western part they are still
fresh and recent. In the old part well-cultivated fields, large barns,
orchards, gardens and comfortable farm-houses greet the traveller's eye:
in the new he may travel for half a day without seeing a single
dwelling, and may consider himself fortunate if he does not have to pass
the night under the lee side of a haystack.

After a foothold has been gained in a new country and a home
established, a generation, perhaps two, must pass away before a fine
type of humanity is produced. The fathers and mothers have toiled for
the actual necessaries of life, and gained them. The children are
supplied with physical comforts. Plenty of food and exercise in the pure
air give them stalwart frames, good blood and perfect animal health, but
there is a bovine stolidity of expression in their faces, a
suggestion of kinship with the clod. They are honest-hearted and
well-meaning--stupid, not naturally, but because their minds have never
been quickened and stimulated. They grope in a blind way for better
things, and wonder if life means no more than to plough and sow and
reap, to wash and cook and sew. I see young people of this class by the
score, and my heart goes out toward them in pity, though they are all
unconscious of needing pity. Perhaps one out of every hundred will break
from the slowly-stepping ranks and run ahead to taste of the springs of
knowledge reserved for the next generation, but the vast majority will
go down to their graves without ever attaining to the ripeness and
symmetry of a fully-developed life. Their children perhaps--certainly
their grand-children--will attain a fine physical and mental type; and
by that time "the prairies" will cease to be a synonym for lack of
society and remoteness from liberal and refining influences.

The land in this vicinity is largely devoted to wheat, corn and oats:
much, however, is used for pasturage, and several fine stock-farms lie
within a radius of five miles. Sheep-rearing is a profitable industry,
the woollen manufactory at this place affording a convenient